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Monday, 25 May 2015

A few macro and related headlines today

With many markets across all geographies around the world closed, a slow start to the week. The regular Stories we should be thinking about will be published later today (Monday) reflecting that for many outside China, Japan, Spain, France and Italy the start of the regular working week is on Tuesday.

Greece -Greece cannot make a repayment to the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) due on 5 June as it does not have the money, the interior
minister says."The four instalments for the IMF in June are €1.6bn, this
money will not be given and is not there to be given," Nikos Voutsis told
Greek TV. But PM Tspiras said they will make the payment…

Early June remains a critical point

European politics -Spain's ruling People's Party (PP) worst result in
more than 20 years ahead of November General Election. In Barcelona, another
left-wing coalition headed by former community activist Ada Colau and backed by
Podemos beat pro-independence parties Convergencia i Unio (CiU) and Esquerra
Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), in a setback for the Catalan separatist
movement. Meanwhile in Poland Andrzej Duda, the candidate of the rightwing
opposition Law and Justice party, won a popular election and ousted Bronisław
Komorowski, the incumbent of the last eight years. The zloty has shot up 6.5
per cent in six sessions.

European politics: never dull and always matters for incumbents to be thinking about

Useful India versus China graphic:

Markets - Bernanke says he doesn't see any mispricings in US
securities or asset prices. Wasn't it a few percentage points lower than here that the current Federal Reserve Chairman overtly worried about markets?

Foreign exchange - dollar's jump has caused the yen to
weaken by 0.1 per cent to Y121.7 in Monday trading, close to the weakest level
in eight years. Meanwhile in South America, DolarToday, a widely followed
website and unofficial reference that tracks exchanges made near the Colombian
border, said that Venezuela's bolívar was trading at some 420 per dollar on
Friday. That was down from 300 bolivars per dollar a little over a week ago, or
100 in September (Fast FT)

The most expensive non English language films ever. How many have you heard of?!